Edith Stein

Biography

(1891-1942)

Edith Stein was a philosopher and champion of the Catholic Church until her death in 1942. She was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland, which was then a part of the German Empire. In 1922 she joined the Roman Catholic Church after reading the mystic teachings of St. Theresa of Avila. As she studied more about the Church, she earned a modest fame in the German Catholic community as a talented teacher and lecturer. She eventually became a Carmelite nun and stayed in the Carmelite monastery in Cologne. Because a law was passed saying that Jewish converts were no longer safe in Nazi Germany, she was transferred to a Carmelite monastery in the Netherlands. However, the safety of the Netherlands was a mere facade because after arriving there, a similar edict was passed saying that Jewish converts to Christianity were to be arrested. Edith and her sister, Rosa, were arrested and sent to Auschwitz where they died in a gas chamber on August 9, 1942. She is remembered today for her philosophical essays on Christianity, but she is more significantly remembered for her writings on women and their abilities to compete equally with men in society.

The world of the spirit is founded on sensuousness which is spiritual as much as physical: the intellect, knowing its activity to be rational, reveals a world; the will intervenes creatively and formatively in this world; the emotion receives this world inwardly and puts it to the test.

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Quotidiana is an online anthology of "classical" essays, from antiquity to the early twentieth century. All essays and images are in the public domain. Commentaries are copyrighted, but may be used with proper attribution. Special thanks to the BYU College of Humanities and English Department for funding, and to Joey Franklin and Lara Burton, for tireless research assisting.